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“Do you think I can pull off sexy?”
The question comes out of goddamn nowhere. Over breakfast, of all things. Eight in the morning and his tribute is staring him down. He needs a drink. “Quackity, what the fuck are you talking about.”
Q doesn’t flinch. Just takes a bite of some kind of pale green fruit and keeps talking. “I mean, I need an angle, right? Something to keep the audience invested. Like Wilbur Soot’s games.”
“Kid, you’re not Wilbur Soot.”
“I know I’m not, that’s why I’m asking,” Quackity says, like it’s obvious. “Anyway, it’s not just Soot. I was looking at Games statistics last night— I have a list, see—”
Thirty years. Thirty fucking years now Schlatt’s been doing this, meeting a kid, spending three days on a train with them, and every goddamn time he’s watched his tribute die. He’d expected Quackity to be the thirty-first in that list; his days of looking at a hungry teenager and hoping are behind him.
Were, apparently, behind him. Because this kid— Quackity with his list and his bright eyes, talking animatedly about statistical distribution and success stories and his image— he genuinely thinks this kid might just make it.
“Yeah,” he says, and grins, “yeah, I think you’ve got a shot at sexy.” Because he does. He’s got a goddamn shot.
Quackity takes to the pre-Games promotion like— hah— a duck to water. The whole train ride there, he’s borrowing Schlatt’s laptop to check old footage or the audience response. Emails his own stylist, even though he can barely type. Schlatt does his best, tells him not to go for the cornucopia no matter what, but let’s be real, the kid basically mentors himself. Still, Schlatt drinks the bare minimum to keep his hands still. Q has a shot. That means, at least for this year, he needs to show up.
They go for consistent, simple branding, red draping fabric and golden wings; 16’s adult in the Capitol but when the makeup artists are done Q looks about five years older. The team goes subtle on the sex appeal, at least— tight pants and exposed collarbones, appealing but not meat. Between learning how to tie knots and how to identify poisonous plants Quackity flirts with the careers in training, and he charms his way through the interview with Flickerman, and on the last night before the Games he’s pacing around their floor and refusing to sleep.
Schlatt, sprawled out on the couch, every bone in his spine and wrists feeling like it’s leeching pain into his bloodstream, can’t quite find it in him to tell the kid to just go to bed already.
“I don’t— I don’t need them to expect me to win. Right? I just, I need them to want me to win. And I need to have enough of a shot that they want it, but like— I don’t, I don’t need them to expect it. I think. Does that sound right?” He’s just this side of hyperventilating.
Schlatt has no idea whether that sounds right. “Doesn’t sound wrong.”
“Fuck. Okay.” Q stops pacing, abruptly, right in front of him, and then collapses onto Schlatt’s shoulder.
On paper this job has always included dealing with scared kids, but in practice Schlatt is not and has never been good at this job. You can tell, right, because of the thirty years without a victor. He reaches over and pulls Quackity closer, puts a hand on his hair and pets him like a cat, because what the hell else is he supposed to do; Q leans into the touch, which Schlatt declines to think about.
“You’re gonna do great,” he says, and he mostly even manages to mean it.
Q does great. Of fucking course he does great. The time he spent with the careers pays off— they keep him around for the first week and a half, fed and alive and surrounded by enough people that he can be charming and funny on camera without it being a too-obvious play, and he lets them take the kills, lets them be the scary dangerous ones so he can be the fan-favorite underdog.
And it works, it fucking works, the gossip boards adore him, Schlatt barely has to work to get him sponsorships, until Quackity’s clinging to a rope ladder and being pulled into a hovercraft and there’s blood all over the left half of his face and none of it matters because he’s fucking alive, it worked, they’re done. They’re done. Schlatt’s hands are shaking from how long it’s been since he had a goddamn drink.
They keep Q in the hospital for two days, and then on day three Schlatt gets the message that his tribute— his victor, now, he pulled a victor, after thirty fucking years he pulled a victor— is awake, is asking to see him. So he goes. Of course he fucking goes.
Quackity has bandages wrapped around his head, covering the whole left side of his face, and his right eye is open but won’t stay focused. He’s still got all the IVs in; Schlatt, thirty years ago, had woken up and immediately started trying to take them out. In the bright white hospital bed he looks so terrifyingly fragile.
Thirty years of watching his kids die, two by two, every year, and now Schlatt’s the one who’s going to have to put Quackity back together. How the fuck is he supposed to do that?
“Hey,” says Q. He doesn’t really seem all that awake, to be honest.
“Hey,” says Schlatt, and takes Quackity’s hand. Q’s good eye contracts, dilates again. “I’m proud of you, pumpkin. So fucking proud of you.”
His eye keeps doing that, in and out, in and out. Like he’s trying to keep Schlatt in focus and not quite managing. “You mean that?”
He’d said it for the sake of having something to say, but— “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Okay.” Q says it with finality, and then he collapses. It wasn’t obvious at all how tense his shoulders were, how much effort he’d been putting in to try to look alert, until suddenly the tension’s gone. “...I think I’m gonna go back to sleep now.”
And then there’s a sleeping kid, the most precious and important thing Schlatt has ever done, in a hospital bed. His hand is still in Schlatt’s. It’s warm. It’s tiny. Fucking christ, he’s so little.
What the hell is Schlatt supposed to do with that? What the hell is he supposed to do with any of this?
Schlatt does the requisite yearly kowtow to the Secretary of Victor Affairs; they’ve got until the end of Q’s victory tour, six months from now, before the reckoning comes. Quackity is crowned. Schlatt brings him home.
There’s a house for him in the victors’ village, but Quackity moves in with Schlatt instead. It’s almost not a decision they make on purpose— just that they’re both exhausted the first night back, just that Q unpacks his things into Schlatt’s drawers, just that without either of them discussing it there’s two toothbrushes in the bathroom and Quackity learning to cook in the kitchen that isn’t supposed to be theirs. Q’s family could move into the village, if they wanted, but they’ve got jobs a city away, it’s just the two of them and Schlatt’s own mentor. Schlatt’s not thinking about that.
Kid’s probably never lived alone before— he’s not from the slaughterhouses, Schlatt knows that much, he had some sort of job training deal before the Reaping, but they still do dorm housing for those, right? Schlatt’s not thinking about that either. They have six months. He needs a goddamn drink.
Q’s gorgeous and charming and funny and— pain shoots up Schlatt’s spine, curdles in his gut— he isn’t dying. He’s the most important thing Schlatt has ever done, and Schlatt barely even fucking did it; Q practically mentored himself and they both know it.
They’re gonna love him in the Capitol. Part of Schlatt is clawing through him with envy. Another part wouldn’t trade for all the money in the world.
The first time he caves, they’re both drunk.
Not like that. Well. Maybe a little bit like that. Schlatt’s whole body hurts like hell, like his joints are all out of fluid and the bones just have to grind against each other until they can get a new shipment in; he’s six shots into a jar of moderately bad moonshine and it’s not helping as much as he’d like it to be. Q’s flushed and giggly on two, which would be embarrassing if it weren’t the cutest goddamn thing. They’re going to fucking love him in the Capitol, he thinks, and then well, mostly they’re going to love fucking him in the Capitol, because the alcohol might not be helping with the pain but it does apparently smooth out the bitterness some.
He takes a seventh shot. Q reaches for a third. Schlatt lets him, lets him move closer and closer. It’s like out of a fucking wet dream— Q bright-eyed and smiley and climbing into his lap, wrapping himself around Schlatt like a vine, nuzzling into his neck.
On no level is this something either of them should be doing. There’s no it seemed like a good idea at the time. It doesn’t. But Schlatt’s not immune to a pretty boy in his lap, and he wasn’t wrong when he said Quackity was hot enough to pull off the sexy charming seducer act— that was just honest facts.
Quackity’s breath is warm, and then his mouth is searing hot, kissing with more enthusiasm than experience; he tastes like moonshine, and then he just tastes like warm skin, a racing heartbeat. The salt of gathered sweat. The salt of. Well. Of something else.
The second time, he’s drunk again. The third time, too, and the fourth. The fifth time, though, he’s sober, and maybe it should stop him, and— what do you fucking know— it doesn’t.
The victory tour stars in District 12, which is just kinda sad, generally, as a place. The only victor is Haymitch Abernathy, who hates Schlatt and who Schlatt hates right back thank you very much, and it goes... fine. Even Haymitch, however much an embarrassment to his district he might be, can’t fuck up an event that badly. Quackity curls up in Schlatt’s lap once they’re back on the train that evening, and they spend a perfectly nice night together.
But there’s just more and more and fucking more. The cameras adore Quackity, his bright eyes and pretty face, and the other victors love him too, all fucking smiles for everyone. The district crowds could take him or leave him but the district crowds aren’t the goddamn point, and the Capitol crowds are in love. Hasn’t even finished his victory tour, and he’s got fancams. Hasn’t even finished his victory tour, and— in District 1 George Lore dances with Quackity and laughs at his jokes, kisses both his cheeks when they see each other, and last year’s victor (Sep? Sap? It’s something idiotic that starts with an S) says ‘it’s nice to finally see you in person’ and sounds like he means it— somehow, already, he’s got friends.
And he still has the fucking nerve to climb in Schlatt’s bed at night and act like he needs him, when they can both see perfectly well that’s a goddamn lie. By the time they’re on the train into the Capitol, Schlatt is about damn ready to kill him.
Not that he’s going to, or anything. Just that he looks at Quackity asleep in the bed that isn’t supposed to be theirs, on his side with one arm over the space where Schlatt isn’t and his hair spread out around him like the opposite of a halo, and he thinks about it in entirely too much detail.
And then, instead, he gets himself a drink.